MORE ON HAZEL COURT

Classic movie and television actress Hazel Court, who lived in the Lake Tahoe area, died Tuesday morning at age 82.

Born in Sutton Coldfield, England, in 1926, Court is best known in the U.S. for starring turns in several Roger Corman horror films, including "The Masque of the Red Death" with Vincent Price. But her screen career was varied.

In the 1940s and '50s, she was a staple of English romances and dramas, and in 1957 she became a popular "scream queen" by starring across from Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee in Hammer Films' "The Curse of Frankenstein."

News of Court's death began circulating when Ron Adams announced it on his CreepyClassics.com Web site, and Bruce Sachs, publisher of her forthcoming autobiography "Hazel Court: Horror Queen" confirmed the news in a phone interview with the Reno Gazette-Journal Wednesday. Adams said the cause of death was a heart attack, and that Court arrested in the hospital and could not be brought back.

Although she was a star in England, Court moved to Hollywood in the early 1960s where she started one of the most memorable phases of her career, working with Corman on "Premature Burial," "The Raven" and "Masque."

While these films firmly established her as a horror star, Court's acting career spanned genres. Fans of classic television may remember her from a short stint as Jane Starrett in "Dick and the Duchess," a CBS sitcom that aired in America but was filmed in England. Court played an English woman married to an American insurance claims investigator (Patrick O'Neal) who was living abroad. She also made appearances in many of the most popular television series of the 1960s, including "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," "Mission Impossible," "The Twilight Zone" and "Rawhide."

"She had a very diverse acting career, starting with theater and film," said Sachs. "I mean she was one of Britain's top movie actresses in the '40s and '50s. In fact, in the book, we've got a two-page color spread of all these magazine covers that she was on the cover of. She was an incredible beauty and a pinup."

For years, Court and her second husband, actor-director Don Taylor, resided in Santa Monica, Calif., and kept a vacation home near Squaw Valley. After Taylor died in 1998, Court moved to Tahoe full time.Court was scheduled to appear at a Pennsylvania-based horror convention that is run by Adams this summer. While there, she and Sachs planned to kick off the American release of her autobiography. The book, published by Tomahawk Press, is slated to debut in Britain next week and reach the U.S. in early June.

"Hazel Court was an icon for people growing up in the 1950s and 1960s," Adams said. "All of us, as kids, saw her in movies, like 'The Curse of Frankenstein' or 'Doctor Blood's Coffin,' all these great Saturday afternoon movies. ... At that age when you're seeing those kinds of movies, they stick with you. Now, we're between 40 and 60 years old and idolizing these people. It's really, really tragic to hear of Hazel's passing."

Sachs said he didn't view his relationship with Court as pure business, and he said she would frequently correspond with him about life in Tahoe.

"We were very, very close friends," he said. "She actually didn't like L.A. or Hollywood all that much. ... Weekly, she'd send me another picture of another mountain or another snowfall or something. I mean she was just so in love with where she lived. It was an absolute love affair."

Although Court had a successful movie career, she essentially left the business in the 1970s. Sachs said that was so she could be a full-time mother. Court did not, however, limit herself to homemaker status. She was a professional sculptor and painter, and her work can be seen in a variety of galleries and public spaces.

According to the Associated Press, she is survived by two daughters, Sally Walsh of Los Angeles and Courtney Taylor of Ojai; a son, Jonathan Taylor of Reno; and two step-daughters, Anne Taylor Fleming of Los Angeles and Avery Taylor of San Francisco.